Oe scip Mid.E. Ship

The Old English combination SK’ was palatalized in all positions. In all words of English origin it developed into /∫/. The modern combination /sk/ shows the word to have been borrowed or to have undergone phonetic influences by some other language, usually by Scandinavian.

e.g. school-Latin, e.g sky-ski- Scandinavian

2. The vocalization of the palatal fricative consonants and the formation of new diphthongs.

The velar sound (g) existed in OE next to back vowels. In MidE (XII-XIII) /g/ /w/ /u/ nonsyllabic becoming the second element of diphthong,

OE	ag	Mid.E	Au az	OE	lagu	Mid.E	law [lau]
OE	āg	Mid.E	ōw ou	OE	āgen	Mid.E	Owen own [oun]
OE	og	Mid.E	ow ou	OE	boga	Mid.E	bow [boū]
OE	ug	Mid.E	uw u	OE	fugol	Mid.E	fuwel [fu:l]New E.(fowl [au]
OE	ūg	Mid.E	ūw ū	OE	būgan	Mid.E	buwen /bū(n)/ N.E. /bau/

Sometimes the velar sound /g/ followed a consonant, in which case also a new diphthong developed.

The palatal sound (g’) was always in a position next to a front vowel and being vocalized it turned into /j:i/, becoming the second element in a diphthong,

O.E.	aeg	Mid.E.	aej ai	O.E.	Daeg	Mid.E.	dai /ai/
O.E.	eg	Mid.E.	ej ei	O.E.	Weg	Mid.E.	woi
O.E	ig	Mid.E.	ij i	O.E.	(and in non-stressed syllables into i)
O.E.	bysig	Mid.E.	busy	O.E.	manig	Mid.E.	many

Note: hard /g/ remained /g/ in Mid.E. and New English.

gōs Mid.E. goose gōd Mid.E. good grēat Mid.E. great

Soft /g/ at the beginning of a word changed into a vowel or a semi-vowel

e.g. OE gӯt NE. yet

In this way, as a result of the development of (g’) new diphthongs (au, ou, ai, ei) were formed in the Middle English period. The old system of long and short diphthongs disappeared.

Note: In some words, where the sound /g/ had never been present /w/ was also vocalized, e.g.

O.E.

Chāwan

Mid. E.

knōwe(n)

New.E.

know

5.)Special features of Middle English spelling

Many English sounds began to be denoted by digraphs like in French.

1. /ū/ -long /u/ was denoted in writing by ou; OE hūs MidE hous;

OE mūs MidE. mous /u:/

2. /u/ short /u/ -next to the letters ‘m, n.v.u.w.l.’ was written ‘o’, as a large number of letters consisting of straight lines together could lead to misunderstandings.

3. The letters y,i, became interchangeable in Middle English and were used parallelly. Gradually the custom developed to write ‘y’ at the end of words, instead ‘i’.

4.The long open sound /ē/ was written as the digraph ‘ea’ OE e ME sea and the long closed (ē) as the digraphs ‘ee, ie’ OE sēon ME seen OE fēld ME field

5.The long open /ō/ was denoted by ‘o’oa’ oak, stone’. The long closed ō –by oo’

O.E. bōc Mid.E. book /ō/.

6. For the sound (t) the digraph ‘ch’ was used;

O.E. cild Mid.E. child

7. For (dʒ) the digraph ‘dg’ and the letters ‘g, j’ were used.

8. For (s) –‘sh’ Ex. O.E. fisc Mid.E. fish

9. The rune disappeared and was replaced by ‘th’.

10. The letter ‘k’ was introduced so that two ways of writing the sound /k/ were used.

/k/ -‘c’ before back vowels –comen

‘k’ before front vowels in ‘keen’, in the combination ‘kn’, and at the end of words.

O.E.	bōc	Mid.E.	Book	O.E.	cēpan	Mid.E.	keepe(n)
O.E.	cnāwan	Mid.E.	knowe(n)

11. The letter ‘v’ was introduced to denote the voiced variant of the Old English ‘f’ for example: the word ‘to love’ was spelt with an ‘f’ in Old English and with a ‘v’ in Middle English.

O.E.

lufian

Mid.E.

loven

12. The Anglo-Norman scribes introduced the digraph ‘gh’ to denote the hard (x) /like in Russian “xama” and the soft variant as in “хижина” (light, night).

In Old English these sound had been denoted by the letter ‘h’ O.E. hlyhhan, hlaehhan Mid.E. laghen-laughen New E. /la:f/ Germ. lachen Goth. hlahjan.